Such, in so far as I can unravel the web of the diplomatic correspondence, appear to have been the open positions and the secret purposes of the great European powers.

There remains the fourth figure upon the board, the pope himself, labouring with such means as were at his disposal to watch over the interests of the church, and to neutralise the destructive ambition of the princes, by playing upon their respective selfishnesses.  On the central question, that of the divorce, his position was briefly this.  Both the emperor and Henry pressed for a decision.  If he decided for Henry, he lost Germany; if he decided for Catherine, while Henry was supported by Francis, France and England threatened both to fall from him.  It was therefore necessary for him to induce the emperor to consent to delay, while he worked upon the King of France; and, if France and England could once be separated, he trusted that Henry would yield in despair.  This most subtle and difficult policy reveals itself in the transactions open and secret of the ensuing years.  It was followed with a dexterity as extraordinary as its unscrupulousness, and with all but perfect success.  That it failed at all, in the ordinary sense of failure, was due to the accidental delay of a courier; and Clement, while he succeeded in preserving the allegiance of France to the Roman see, succeeded also—­and this is no small thing to have accomplished—­in weaving the most curious tissue of falsehood which will be met with even in the fertile pages of Italian subtlety.

With this general understanding of the relation between the great parties in the drama, let us look to their exact position in the summer of 1532.

Charles was engaged in repelling an invasion of the Turks, with an anarchical Germany in his rear, seething with fanatical anabaptists, and clamouring for a general council.

Henry and Francis had been called upon to furnish a contingent against Solyman, and had declined to act with the emperor.  They had undertaken to concert their own measures between themselves, if it proved necessary for them to move; and in the meantime Cardinal Grammont and Cardinal Tournon were sent by Francis to Rome, to inform Clement that unless he gave a verdict in Henry’s favour, the Kings of France and England, being une mesme chose, would pursue some policy with respect to him,[375] to which he would regret that he had compelled them to have recourse.  So far their instructions were avowed and open.  A private message revealed the secret means by which the pope might escape from his dilemma; the cardinals were to negotiate a marriage between the Duke of Orleans and the pope’s niece (afterwards so infamously famous), Catherine de Medicis.  The marriage, as Francis represented it to Henry, was beneath the dignity of a prince of France, he had consented to it, as he professed, only for Henry’s sake;[376] but the pope had made it palatable by a secret article in the engagement, for the grant of the duchy of Milan as the lady’s dowry.